Leonidas Kyriakides

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Cyprus

This paper investigates the extent to which the teacher factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness are related to each other forming stages of effective teaching. It also investigates whether teachers situated at higher stages are more effective than those situated at lower stages in terms of promoting student learning outcomes. All...

This paper argues for an integrated model of effective teaching which refers to teaching factors that emerge from two theoretical frameworks: the Dynamic Model of Educational Effectiveness and the Educational Dialogue Framework. Twenty-nine primary school teachers and their 489 students (aged 9–12) participated in the study. Student achievement usi...

Educational effectiveness research shows that teachers play a significant role in promoting student learning. However, most studies were concerned with the impact of secondary or primary teachers. The use of play for promoting learning in ECEC is also supported, despite that there is almost no evidence about the impact of either the play or the gen...

Currently there is an attempt to combine subject-generic and subject-specific teaching frameworks to comprehensively capture teaching quality. This study explores the possibility of integrating two widely used and validated frameworks, the subject-generic Dynamic Model of Educational Effectiveness (DMEE) and the subject-specific Mathematical Qualit...

Background: Research has shown that students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have lower academic performance compared to children from better-off families. However, the way that socioeconomic status (SES) influences student learning outcomes has not yet been fully examined. Thus, this study explores the indirect effects o...

The chapter discusses the need of using a theory-driven and evidence-based approach for teaching improvement purposes and argues that the dynamic model of educational effectiveness may be used for establishing links between educational effectiveness research and research on teaching improvement. In the first part of the chapter the main elements of...

The chapter refers to the evolvement of Educational Effectiveness Research (EER) during the last 40 years that begun from the mere identification of correlations among factors and led to the development of integrated models of effectiveness. Then, the chapter refers to the development of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness which emerged...

The chapter brings together the individual chapter perspectives on theorizing teaching and thus initiating exchanges among the authors on outstanding issues and discrepancies to provide insights for how research on teaching may move forward. The Delphi study conducted for this aim was based on summaries of the answers of all individual chapters on...

To explore the wider educational environment included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness, this paper reexamines the association between student achievement and two national culture dimensions: Monumentalism-Flexibility and Collectivism-Individualism. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 data of 317,127 stu...

In this chapter, we draw on the need for developing effective teacher evaluation systems based on valid theories to identify effective teachers. In this context, the main elements of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system are described in the second section of the chapter and the need for establishing meta-evaluation mechanisms is emphasized in...

This paper aims to discuss how and under which conditions can we best combine research on School Effectiveness with research on School Improvement by utilizing the Dynamic Approach (DA) to School Improvement. We firstly elaborate on the difficulties that exist in trying to merge results from research on School Effectiveness with research on School...

This paper aims to investigate if and how students’ engagement in mathematics affect their learning outcomes. Specifically, it searches for direct and/or indirect effects of instructional engagement on cognitive and affective learning outcomes in mathematics. Separate multilevel analyses were employed for each European country that participated in...

This study investigates differential effectiveness of teacher behaviour in relation to classroom composition by searching for the extent to which teachers exhibit the same teaching skills when they teach mathematics in different classrooms within a school year. Twenty-six teachers who taught mathematics in more than one classroom of the same age gr...

Given the need to develop common frameworks for conceptualizing teaching quality and common instruments for measuring it, the current paper brings together a small group of interested scholars who have used generic, content-specific, and hybrid frameworks and classroom observation instruments to reflect on how collaboration can be enhanced in resea...

Empirical studies and meta-analyses conducted during the past 35 years led to the development of a number of theoretical frameworks of teacher effectiveness. In this paper, we aim to summarize the main characteristics of three dominant frameworks within the field of educational effectiveness and discuss both their conceptual differences and their s...

This study investigates the extent to which the Dynamic Approach (DA) to Teacher Professional Development (TPD) can help teachers develop their assessment skills and through that contribute to the improvement of student learning outcomes. To achieve this aim, a multi-treatment group randomisation study was conducted to compare the impact of the DA...

Having in mind that student achievement and interest in subject are some of the most important educational goals, and that quality of teaching is the crucial schooling factor influencing them, we examined the contribution of teacher-level variables from the dynamic model of educational effectiveness to student achievement and interest in mathematic...

This paper investigates the sustainability and the impact of offering the dynamic approach (DA) to schools for more than 1 year in improving student achievement in mathematics (quality) and reducing the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on achievement (equity). A sample of 56 schools in socially disadvantaged areas in three countries (i.e., Cypr...

This chapter draws on teacher effectiveness research (TER) and elaborates on factors associated with teacher effectiveness to make suggestions for professional development. The first part provides a critical review of TER in which the major findings of this field are studied. In the second part, taking into account the limitations of TER, the dynam...

This chapter refers to theories of educational effectiveness which have been developed during the last four decades. It is shown that researchers moved from searching for the impact of isolated factors associated with different theoretical perspectives of effectiveness to the development of integrated models which take into account the multilevel n...

This paper refers to whole school interventions aiming to promote student learning outcomes through improving the functioning of school factors. Evaluation studies of these interventions mainly measure their impact on student learning outcomes. This paper argues for the importance of studying the mechanisms of whole school interventions through tes...

This paper provides a critical review of indicators that can be used to measure equity in educational outcomes. These indicators are evaluated using different criteria. Further, analysis on how the sample structure affects equity measurements is undertaken. Analyses are based on theoretical reasoning and empirical data from the German National Educ...

This study investigates the impact of teaching factors on students’ cognitive and metacognitive achievement in mathematics. Written tests and the “Metacognitive Skills and Knowledge Assessment” tool were administered to grade 4 and 5 students (n = 924) at the beginning and end of the school year 2013-2014. A student questionnaire was used for measu...

Purpose : This study explores physical education teaching quality and its effects on student psychomotor learning by bringing together generic and content-specific practices. Method : A sample of 51 elementary classroom teachers who taught physical education to third-, fourth-, or fifth-grade students ( N = 944) was recruited. Student psychomotor d...

Purpose : Teacher content knowledge (CK) and its contribution to student achievement (SA) are understudied in physical education, especially concerning the examination of the effectiveness of professional development (PD) programs using direct measures of teachers’ CK and SA. To make progress in this research area, this study investigated the contr...

This paper investigates the short- and long-term effects of both the home learning environment (HLE) and the teacher factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness upon student mathematics achievement. Written tests were administered to Grade 1 students (N = 1,444) of 48 primary schools at the beginning of Year 1 and at the end of Year 1...

Background: Recent effectiveness studies have investigated the relationship between two dimensions of effectiveness – namely, quality and equity. Specifically, the question of whether effective schools can also reduce the initial differences in student outcomes attributed to student background factors has been examined. In this context, the Dynamic...

Although consistency in teacher effectiveness has attracted scholarly interest since the 1960s, revived interest in differential teacher effectiveness is recently witnessed, with empirical studies more systematically testing this assumption. Most of these studies, however, focus on cognitive outcomes in “core” subject matters. Drawing on 2 subject...

This paper presents the results of a European study investigating the extent to which the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI) can help schools situated in socially disadvantaged areas to improve their effectiveness. At the beginning of the school year 2015–2016, a sample of 72 primary schools in four European countries (Cyprus, England, G...

The vast majority of research in physical education (PE) has focused on teaching and teacher effectiveness. Despite the fact that this research strand is fast growing, what effective teaching is and how it contributes to student learning still remains an open issue. Aiming to contribute toward moving the research of effective teaching in the field...

This paper argues that research on differential teacher and school effectiveness can be used to explore the relation between quality and equity in education. The results of secondary analyses of 2 studies concerned with effectiveness in different phases of schooling (pre-primary and primary education) are presented. These secondary analyses reveal...

Teacher effectiveness, which impacts student attainment even when controlling for student characteristics, is of key importance as a factor in educational effectiveness and improvement. Improving the quality of teaching is thus the primary means by which we can enhance student learning outcomes. Thus there has long been great interest in the develo...

The dynamic model of educational effectiveness refers to eight factors that describe teachers’ instructional role. A multidimensional framework for measuring both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of teaching factors is also proposed. Empirical support for the validity of the model has been provided, which revealed that the teaching fact...

This paper investigates the impact of national policies for improving teaching and the school learning environment (SLE) on student achievement. In each participating country (i.e., Belgium/Flanders, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Slovenia), a sample of at least 50 schools was drawn and tests in mathematics and science were administered to a...

Omitted prior achievement bias is pervasive in international assessment studies and precludes causal inference. For example, reported negative associations between student-oriented teaching strategies and student performance are against expectations and might actually reflect omitted prior achievement bias. Namely, that these teaching strategies ar...

Various theories concerning teacher effectiveness (e.g., Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs & Robinson, 2003; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Marzano, 2003) indicate that consistency and variation in teaching practices may affect individual teacher effectiveness and collective teacher effectiveness in a school, but have not received enough regard. The study...

Heightened accountability pressures and an increased emphasis on teaching quality have directed scholarly attention to scrutinizing instruction, particularly with respect to issues of validity and reliability. However, these attempts have largely been directed toward “core” content areas and investigated generic or content-specific instructional as...

In this chapter, a brief review of studies looking at various psychological dimensions of the School Learning Environment (SLE) is provided, and the methods used to measure these dimensions of SLE are presented. Since the focus of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 was on student achievement in science, the second part o...

This paper investigates the extent to which teacher behaviour in classroom affects student achievement gains in mathematics in Ghana. A representative sample of primary schools from three districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana was selected (n = 73) using stage sampling procedure, and written tests in mathematics were administered to all grade...

Modern educational theories emphasise effectiveness enhancing factors at the classroom level and differential effectiveness for sub-groups of students and across different learning contexts. Theoretical developments, however, are generally based on national evidence and have been criticised for lacking cross-cultural perspectives. This study used P...

This study investigates the impact of the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI) on promoting _quality_ and _equity_. Forty primary schools in socially disadvantaged areas were randomly split into two groups. The control group was supported to develop action plans, whereas the experimental group used DASI. To investigate the impact of DASI o...

This chapter attempts to make a contribution to knowledge and theory building in the field of school improvement in relation to educational effectiveness research. It refers to a dynamic perspective of educational effectiveness and improvement stressing the importance of using an evidence-based and theory-driven approach. Specifically, an approach...

This article provides a historical review of Educational Effectiveness Research (EER). Four sequential phases in the field which address different types of research questions and promote the theoretical development of educational effectiveness are identified. It is shown that research on effectiveness moved from investigating the extent to which te...

This European project investigates the impact of the school factors included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness on student achievement. In each participating country (Belgium/Flanders, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia), a sample of at least 50 schools was drawn and tests in mathematics and science were administered to al...

Theory-driven evaluation is a collection of different methodological approaches that can be used by evaluators in trying to understand the impact of a reform policy evaluation such as those of programme theory, theories-of-change, and realism. In this chapter, the main features of theory-driven evaluation studies are described. Moreover, it is argu...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework on how school policy can promote student learning. School policy is considered to have an indirect effect on student achievement by changing school stakeholders' actions toward improving the School Learning Environment (SLE) and teaching practice. A reciprocal relationship between school policy and stakeh...

Background. The dynamic model of educational effectiveness (DMEE) is a comprehensive theoretical framework including factors that are important for school learning, based on consistent findings within educational effectiveness research. Purpose. This study investigates the impact of teacher and school factors of DMEE on mathematics and science achi...

Modern educational theories emphasise effectiveness enhancing factors at the classroom level and differential effectiveness for subgroups of students and across different learning contexts. Classroom-level data is not available in the Programme for International Student Assessment, but in 2012 information about instructional approaches of mathemati...

The main objective of this study was to quantify the impact of failing to account for measurement error on school compositional effects. Multilevel structural equation models were incorporated to control for measurement error and/or sampling error. Study 1, a large sample of English primary students in Years 1 and 4, revealed a significantly negati...

This paper argues that the dynamic model of educational effectiveness can be used to establish stronger links between educational effectiveness research (EER) and school improvement. It provides research evidence to support the validity of the model. Thus, the importance of using the dynamic model to establish an evidence-based and theory-driven ap...

This article links the contribution of process-product studies in developing the theoretical framework of educational effectiveness by pointing out the importance of teacher behavior in the classroom. The role that Jere Brophy played in this evolving research is described within the various phases of teacher effectiveness research. Process-product...

This paper refers to the Dynamic Integrated Approach (DIA) towards teacher professional development, which attempts to merge research findings on teacher effectiveness and teacher professional development. The theoretical framework and the major features of the DIA are presented. It is argued that the DIA can be effectively implemented through five...

A framework based on research on bullying and on educational effectiveness was offered to schools to assist them in developing strategies and actions to improve their learning environment, their policy for teaching, and their evaluation mechanisms in order to reduce bullying. At the beginning and end of the intervention, the Revised Olweus Bully/Vi...

One of the key findings from decades of educational effectiveness research is the importance of the classroom level as a predictor of pupil outcomes. In this review, we therefore look at synthesising our best evidence from research on effective teaching, and its corollary, teacher development. In the 1st section, we will look at key findings from 3...

This paper argues for the value of using student ratings to measure quality of teaching. An international study to test the validity of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness was conducted. At classroom level, the model consists of eight factors relating to teacher behaviour: orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modelling, applic...

This study investigates the extent to which the factors included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness are associated with student achievement gains in six different European countries. At classroom level, the dynamic model refers to eight factors relating to teacher behaviour in the classroom: orientation, structuring, questioning, tea...

Meta-analysis comprises a powerful tool for synthesizing prior research and empirically validating theoretical frameworks. Using this tool and the dynamic model of educational effectiveness as a guiding framework, in this paper we present a meta-analysis of 167 studies investigating the impact of teaching factors on student achievement. The factors...

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of practi...

In this introductory chapter, we describe the background of the proposed dynamic approach to teacher training and professional development. The main developments in the theory of, and research into, teacher effectiveness are also outlined. It is argued that the area of teacher training and professional development needs to establish a theory-driven...

In this chapter, it is acknowledged that the dominant approach in teacher training and professional development focuses on encouraging reflection on teaching practices, experiences and beliefs. In teacher professional development programmes based on the reflective paradigm, emphasis is placed on approaches involving the reflective capabilities of o...

This chapter refers to the main characteristics of the competency-based approach to teacher training and professional development, which is based on the assumption that training programmes should refer to the specific knowledge and skills which teachers should possess. The training programmes should also be structured on units related to single ski...

In this chapter, we draw conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the two dominant approaches to teacher training and professional development described in Chaps. 2 and 3. It is shown that none of them has been sufficiently validated, and questions can be raised about the impact of each of these two approaches on the quality of teaching. It i...

In this chapter, it is advocated that teacher training and professional development should focus on how to address specific groupings of teacher factors associated with student learning rather than with isolated teaching factors or with the whole range of teacher factors without considering the professional needs of student teachers and teachers. I...